Tuesday, May 03, 2011

'True Black' (how to avoid fuzzy text)



Here is how to change black text in your Pages document to 'true black':

- select all text in your document,
- in Text Inspector click on the colour well (the bar with which you change colour)
- when Colour Viewer opens, click on the Slides option (second from left),
- choose CMYK in the drop-down menu and set CMY to zero, and K (black) to 100 percent. Repeat the same for text boxes and captions. 

That should give you what they call 'true black'. Default black, Licorice for example, can be composite, i.e. consisting of several colours. It may look nice on the screen, but in professional printing it comes out slightly fuzzy. To avoid that problem change black text to 'true black'. 

If this is too techy, ask the printers to show you how to do it, or ask them to adjust your PDFs themselves. Usually they would do it for an additional fee, or, if you are a regular client with large, long-term project, they just waive the fee.

Photo: Apple blossom, 2011, ©A.Anichkin

2 comments:

  1. Anonymous5:40 pm

    To preserve this black (and other colors you frequently need) just drag it to the small squares at the bottom of the color-chooser-window.
    These prevents you from composing the needed color again and again (and this in every application that supports this window)
    Regards
    AW

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks, good tip!

    If you don't see the colour palette at the bottom of the Colour Viewer, drag the little knob there to open it.
    Another way of saving colours for text is with the Styles Drawer. Open it from the View menu or from the tool bar (view, first icon on the left) and create a new style for characters already in 'true black', save it.
    Next time you need to change text to true black, select it and click on the saved style.

    ReplyDelete

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